OPEN FORUM: California needs health care reform

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is ill prepared to say it, then I’ll say it for him: California is in a state of emergency. As the state struggles to stabilize its budget and as health care concerns now tear at the fabric of our community, with town hall meetings devolving into shouting matches, California has lost its shine.

I knew that health care reform would be the toughest fight facing Congress. In California, we are hurting more than most states. We have 6.7 million Californians without health insurance. California’s rate of uninsured is higher than 42 states and higher than the national average. In one California congressional district, the number of uninsured Californians is 33 percent. This puts our state at risk, with a dangerous price tag for taxpayers. What are the costs? Increased illness among the uninsured, increased use of emergency and social services, decreased worker productivity and weaker economic output.

In my district, we have responded by developing innovative ways to meet the needs of the uninsured. Santa Clara County is making comprehensive health insurance accessible to the 70,000 children with family income at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. This was accomplished with some ingenuity on the part of county leadership and a funding scheme that used multiple sources. As a result, the county is healthier and our families more able to contribute to the economy.

California’s dysfunction is symptomatic of the worst of our country’s health care system. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, the United States spends more than any other industrialized nation ($6,714 per capita) yet 16 developed nations rank higher than the United States in terms of personal health. Ireland, for example, which has a health care system with universal coverage, spends half our amount per capita ($3,082) but scores highest among all developed nations on personal health. Clearly, a different approach is needed — and bold solutions to get us there.

Perhaps this is why, in the same Gallup poll, only 56 percent of American respondents said they have confidence in their country’s health care system. Perhaps this is why Democrats and Republicans agree on the need for health care reform. Perhaps, given the Irish example, this is also why we cannot continue the Republican-preferred free-market folly, with little effort to rein in health care insurers’ costs.

Democrats are not calling for an Irish, or Canadian, or even French version of our health care system. We are simply calling for an affordable public option that creates competition in an overpriced and bloated market.

What would this mean for California? For one, it might mean that we stem the rising tide of uninsured burdening California’s economy. Since the start of the recession, more than 500,000 working-age Californians have lost their health insurance, according to a 2009 report by the UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. That same report predicts that by 2012, the number of uninsured working-age adults in California will be 600,000, if health care reform is not accomplished by Washington.

My dear Californians, this is a not a test of our emergency system: This is a real emergency, one with enormous impacts on our state. It is time to stop quibbling and start caring.

Michael Honda, a Democrat, represents Santa Clara County in the U.S. House of Representatives.